Aperture 243 - Summer 2021

This summer, Aperture presents a special issue focused on the relationship between photography, urbanism, and activist trajectories from within and outside Delhi. Guest edited by Rahaab Allana, the Alkazi Foundation’s lead curator, the issue explores multiple incarnations of the city’s photographic culture, from O. P. Sharma’s experimental works from the 1960s to Aditi Jain’s intimate tableaux of Delhi’s trans community today. Interviews with revered writer Arundhati Roy and with Bangladesh’s best-known photojournalist, Shahidul Alam, illuminate sites of protest in the city and throughout South Asia. Skye Arundhati Thomas revisits Sheba Chhachhi’s feminist staged portraits from the 1980s and ’90s. Featuring a cross section of dynamic image-makers and thinkers, such as Jyoti Dhar, Sunil Gupta, Ishan Tankha, and Anshika Varma, and emerging voices Uzma Mohsin and Prarthna Singh, the issue is a distinctive meditation on regionalism, politics, and identity, through archival and contemporary photographic viewpoints.